Genital herpes continues to be epidemic throughout most sexually active populations in the United States. Despite many advances in our knowledge of the disease, particularly with respect to therapeutic modalities, little is known about the natural history of symptomatic genital HSV infection. This application is directed at performing statistical analyses on the natural history and long term clinical course of genital herpes infection. the offerers have established a database encompassing over 15 years of clinical and laboratory information on individuals with symptomatic genital infection who were prospectively followed over time. We propose to utilize this database in order to evaluate the relationships of viral type, initial disease severity, immune response and demographic characteristics to subsequent recurrences of the disease. This proposal expands the scope of our previous studies, which were limited to select subsets of this database. The magnitude of this database will allow us to extend our previous observations using more complex statistical models, and to test new hypothesis arising from our evolving understanding of the relationship between host and epidemiologic factors and disease course.